DriveSetup error preparing disk

[meanwhile]

Trying to re-initialize a corrupted partition, using DriveSetup (on Haiku r25619) fails with: "There was an error preparing the disk for modifications. Error: Invalid Argument."

[stippi]

Could you please run DriveSetup in a Terminal and reproduce the error? You should get more specific error output, please paste it here.

[meanwhile]

Thanks; could you please tell me how to do so? I'm not experienced in using Terminal at all, unfortunately...

[stippi]

Open the "Terminal" application. At the prompt, type "DriveSetup" (case is important) and hit the Return/Enter key. This works because the path to the "DriveSetup" application in the file system is part of the "PATH" environment variable, which contains all paths that the Terminal searches for "commands". Commands are just regular programs without a graphical user interface. Most often, commands do something with the "standard input" and the "standard output", which has to do with the text in the Terminal, think of these as input and output data channels. The power of the Terminal is that multiple commands can be chained together by these channels, and entire programs can be formed by scripts of commands. You should look into it sometimes, it can be quite interesting and powerful! :-) DriveSetup outputs additional error information to the "standard output", which means into the Terminal if you launch it there. If you launch DriveSetup from Tracker/Deskbar, this output goes "nowhere" and stays invisible.

[meanwhile]

Insight into the partitions spread over 2 HD's

[meanwhile]

What the Terminal says after starting DriveSetup, selecting 'no name' and choosing 'Partition', 'Initialize', 'Be File System', 'Continue', 'OK'.

[meanwhile]

I forgot to mention what I did before: After problems (described in #2461), I reformatted the troublesome Haiku partition using PartitionMagic into another filesystem (FAT32), then installed BeOS 5 Pro onto it, from its original install-disc. When asked by the BeOS 5 Pro installer if I wanted to initialize the partition, I chose 'yes' and used the 1024 blocksize. After installing had completed, I checked if the BeOS 5 Pro was properly installed and it was. It was this partition, named 'no name' (see above), that I then tried to initialize, using DriveSetup from another - but still working- Haiku partition on the same PC.

Stippi, please let me know if you think this is a DriveSetup bug that can be solved someday, or if it is something inevitable that has to do with recent changes in Haiku.

Or maybe DriveSetup can initialize other filesystems like NTFS or FAT32? I'd try that then.

[meanwhile]

Update: just managed to replace the working Haiku partition with the latest revision (without initializing)...

[stippi]

I am getting a similar error as long as I have the reiserfs add-on installed. But I am getting reiserfs related output in the Terminal when I try to init a partition. When I remove the reiserfs add-on, I can init the partition. However, your output looks different. We may work on partitioning in the next weeks. It doesn't really matter if the problem is in DriveSetup (probably not) or somewhere closer to the kernel and it's add-ons. It's just a bug that we need to fix. As long as it is reproducible, it should be relatively quick to find.

[bonefish]

Should be fixed in r26397. Please verify.

[meanwhile]

Tried it from r26397 (see attachment)

[stippi]

Please try again with r26465, DriveSetup could be confused in various ways. The preparation for modifications would then fail before initializing a partition.

[meanwhile]

Added attachment with the results from r26477.

[stippi]

This looks more like a problem in the disk device manager from the output.